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Re: [Wisdom-l] Bhanu: Kishore Mahbubani ?

My Dear Pat, Namaste. (The Story of Second Titanic) I am reminded of a joke when one talks about Kishore Mahbubani*s recognition of western worth in such

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, Feb 22, 2013

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My Dear Pat, Namaste.

(The Story of Second Titanic)

I
am reminded of a joke when one talks about Kishore Mahbubani*s recognition of
western worth in such terms as *Seven Pillars of Western Wisdom* (viz.
Free-market economics, Science and Technology, Meritocracy, Pragmatism, Culture
of Peace, Rule of Law, Education).

The
joke is this. You (a woman) meet somebody (another woman) for whom you develop
soon a liking for reasons unknown to you and inquire of her some personal
details. Your fondness for this person ascends as you listen to attractive
self-descriptions whose plausibility you have already assumed. How nice it was
to know that this potential friend was an artist, a singer, an engineer, a
social worker and so on! However, she would like to whisper the last point about
her into your ear, feeling a bit coy over the fact that you wouldn*t probably
like the last characteristic. And she finally tells you that she is in the grip
of the habit of lying!!

Naturally,
you would now be ashamed of your altruism of believing the woman as this moral
retrogression was enough to annul all of her purported positive features. The
last personal feature whispered into your ears is indeed the *absolute retrograde*.

Similarly,
what if one or more Kishorean Pillars of purported Western Wisdom happens to be
a socio-culture retrograde? An absolute socio-cultural retrograde?

If
you take a close look at these seven pillars of wisdom, you find each one of them
to be a composite agent of civilization, not a singular/ elementary one. These
composites could be riddled with deficiency and redundancy.

For
example, free market economics can not be deemed to be benign at all if it is
to implicitly acknowledge the in-built vice of encouraging unlimited
superfluity of choices about the most redundant material requirement - at the
cost of longevity of our planet (that is being deemed to cradle the peak
evolution of universe).

Science
and technology isn*t a lay option available unconditionally without a
socio-cultural prelude and moral-instinctive pre-condition.

An
inadequately conceived meritocracy runs the risk of being overwhelmed by
snobbish vagary of education.

Pragmatism
contaminated with conceit could, if not rectified in time, turn into virtual
cannibalism at some stage.

Rule
of law could turn into a piece of deceptive rhetoric if promulgation of law as
an integral part of national sovereignty was to be devoid of the concern of
nationalizing wisdom and jurisprudence.

Culture
of peace could be a redundantly altruist notion if it doesn*t consider any
objective higher than mere peaceful coexistence.

These
seven composite agents of civilization need to be resolved into their
elementary components firstly and then, the retrograde components must be
isolated and quarantined as germs of apocalypse. The identities of individual
agents need to be expressed as permutation-combination of their elements and
any agent with in-built retrograde element is to be stricken off.

How
many of these purported pillars of western wisdom will survive this ingenious
intellectual operation to assign a semblance of dignity and ascribe a semblance
of superiority to US/ West? In other words, Kishore needs to brace up to clear
own vision. Because this intellectual exercise will also clarify if Kishore-perceived
American-Western wisdom and image is indeed positive or is mostly mistaken. He
could have mistaken imposed dignity and brute superiority for proof of wisdom
abstract.

Kishore*s perception of the East is also equally
indiscriminate and lopsided. Take the two prominent corners of Eastern
Hemisphere viz. China and India. He appears to have reckoned both equal with
respect to respective march to modernity, weltanschauug (worldview), actual
self-worth, implementation of personal freedom, capacity to embrace the West
and multitude of aspects of civilization Kishore Mahbubani so ornately spells.
He couldn*t be more wrong.

How
can he be expected to be even marginally right in this comparative study if he
doesn*t have and doesn*t look for the cardinal/ absolute index of society/
culture/ civilization? The easiest and the best one probably is the index of
crime/ immorality. Has he ever put India on crime/ immorality scale? Has he
ever witnessed/ imagined the ghastliness of the actual Indian social scenario?
Or, has he again made the mistake of seeing through the warped American eye
that may discount million socio-cultural deaths of another country (third-word
country) to capitalize on few conducive/ selected politicizable cases of
purported/ fictitious *human right violation* underscoring a lopsided sense of morality
and justice?

Kishore
commits the double-fault of overestimating classical West/ US and Modern India,
the two chameleons. This makes his international perspective deficient.

We
do appreciate his surmises about the foreseeable fall of American
pseudo-modernism and rise of Asia. But the story that will unfold to vindicate
Kishore*s surmises is different from the details he conjures up. It is the story
of the great triangle whose vertices represent centers of global civilization
of past, present and future.

The
past had witnessed the greatest socio-cultural polarization in the Eastern Hemisphere,
in India. The present age is still witnessing the highest global polarization
in the Western Hemisphere, in US/ West. This flight of global center from East
to West depicted the rise of the West and the decline of the East.

The
East-to-West flight of global socio-cultural center is about to be reversed in
near future. Kishore*s words seems to be prophetic up to this point. But what
he has to see further is that the West-to-East flight of global socio-cultural polarity
would be consummated in China. And the credit for this historic phenomenon
would go exclusively to China.

That
is not all. The saddest part of the futuristic story is that the Titanic will
sink prior to this stretch of evolution of history, if an averting magic
doesn*t occur. The doomed ship is India, the second Titanic. And this Titanic,
even as she arrives at the bottom of the ocean, will still have in her coffers
the heart (the metaphor to mean genes) of the planet.

How
would India be so doomed? - That is because of its neo-Indian navigators who still
think the clean-and-crystalline heaven (iceberg) visible ahead is the
destination.

How
would China be rewarded with such a global glory? - That is because she is the heir
apparent to pan-Indian socio-cultural legacy, erstwhile global essence, because
she is thus the inheritor of feline human genes. To realize this, you have to
look into the transcendental theory of evolution that puts civilization as function
of national genes and that puts national genes as function of metaphysical
movements. The time-bomb of Buddhist metaphysics have been ticking to
conflagrate as the winner genes later in China.

What
is that actual tipping national characteristic that would give China an edge
over US/ West. It is progressive incorporation of higher democracy into
national constitution. Protraction of disproportionate/ unlimited econo-social
security is taking epidemic form to gnaw away Western Democracy, the iceberg
that India wishes to harvest a destination from.

Is
Chinese success really so succinct? - No. It isn*t. It is about to be on the
crossroad where it will meet the fatal contingency of choosing between the
Kishore Mahbubani-spelt sevel pillars of western wisdom with in-built
retrogrades and civil democracy projected by the theory of absolute polity.

Since you and others have some interest in
political philosopy, Bhanu, I am wondering if you are familiar with the writings
of Kishore Mahbubani? If so, what are your opinions of his ideas? As
you may know, he was the President of the UN Security Council 2001-02, and UN
Ambassador from Singapore. He was
born of Indian parents in an impoverished area of Singapore 64 yrs
ago.

I heard Kishore speak recently @ Cornell and found
his ideas about the need for world collaboration interesting; I am currently
reading 4 of his books. In his view, the USA's tendency to stay
stuck focusing on world leadership instead
of supporting world organizations and other means of world collaboration is very
problematic & unfortunate for the USA now, and going forward.

Kishore's message at the outset of his Cornell
talk was that there is much pessimism in the West, including Europe,
whereas many Eastern countries are enjoying much rapid successful
economic/cultural development as a result of being influenced by " The 7 Pillars
of Western Wisdom" (his term which includes free market, rule of law, etc...)
and are optimistic; In his view, the West is currenty moving away from the
7 pillars.

Many points of his Cornell talk are laid out in his
most recent book published in Feb/13. He discussed the 7 pillars in his 2008 book: The New Asian
Hemisphere.

Your thoughts?

Thanks ~ Namaste, Pat Louise

____________________________________________________________________

May our efforts benefit

all beings and the
earth.

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